Getting Ready For The U.S. Open

June 3, 2008 by Mike 6 Comments

$Major\'s and Son Major\'s gear for the U.S. Open$

On Sunday at around 3:30pm, Son Major and The Major will depart for the Tampa airport to make the trek to San Diego and the 2008 U.S. Open Championship. We signed up to be volunteers almost a year and a half ago. We will be working the Thru and Leaderboards during the competition. We have passes for the three practice rounds on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and for the Championship on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If there’s a playoff on Monday, we’ll get to see that too.

The photo is of some of the gear we have. You can see the hat, shirt, parking passes, lunch vouchers (yellow), and of course the volunteer pass that gets us in for all the activities. ¹We also received another shirt, water bottle, and jacket

Much to my surprise, cameras will be allowed on the three practice days, so we’ll be snapping lots of photos. I might even get another card for my camera. No cell phones are allowed on any day, and not cameras are allowed on the Championship days. Read more

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	We also received another shirt, water bottle, and jacket

The Dreaded Machine

June 3, 2008 by Mike 4 Comments

As posted earlier, Mrs. Major has a constant physical motion (CPM) machine that flexes and extends her legs. She is supposed to spend six to eight hours a day per knee in the machine. That’s next to impossible.

We call it dreaded because she can’t get in and out of it by herself. Well, actually, she can get out of it if her right leg is in it because she can roll to the left out of the bed lifting her right leg as she rolls. When her left leg is in the machine, she can’t roll to the left ¹Her side of the bed is the left side when she’s laying on her back. It’s hard to get into because there’s a furry extension that she must lay on with her butt and it’s nearly impossible to get flat. The wrinkles make her sore: the princess and the pea sort of thing. The photo is an early one (bandages still on) of her leg in the dreaded machine.

She was a little down this morning. She’s getting very tired of not being able to go at it full steam ahead. She’s tired of the achy knees. And she’s tired of not ever being able to get comfortable.

The great news is that her flexion is 103º in her right leg and 105º in her left. I think she has the dreaded machine cranked up to 109º. I heard great cheering from the other room when the therapist did the measurements.

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	Her side of the bed is the left side when she’s laying on her back.

More Progress

June 1, 2008 by Mike 4 Comments

Mrs. Major was showing off for Son Major yesterday. She stood up from sitting on the bed without the use of her arms. Of course our bed is higher off the ground (24 in) than a normal chair (17 in), but, still…

Today, she also stood up and dried herself after her shower (she had been formerly sitting down to dry herself); then she walked out of the shower to her walker.

Staples Are Out

May 27, 2008 by Mike 6 Comments

$Mrs. Major\'s New Stripes$

The nurse took out all the staples from Mrs. Major’s knees. The tool she used looked nothing like the staple puller I have in my desk. No wonder Mrs. Major didn’t want me to do it. The tool looked like a small pair of pliers that had two teeth on the bottom and one on the top. When she squeezed, the staple would bend upward from the middle, unhook itself from the incision, and Mrs. Major would gasp. Read more

The Latest On The Knees

May 25, 2008 by Mike 2 Comments

Mrs. Major continues to make improvements. She’s got her CPM dialed up to 99º. We don’t know what her actual flexion is, we’ll find that out when the PT comes on Tuesday, but that’s a full 9º more than two days ago on the machine. Mrs. Major continues to work very hard at her exercises even though she’s in almost constant pain. She says it’s not any worse than before the knee replacement, but it’s different…mostly in the muscles around the knees. Read more